A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes

Through embalming and sealed caskets advertised for “eternal rest,” the American funeral industry caters to our anxiety over bodily decay. In 1903, a Russian-born inventor in Herkimer, New York, named Joseph Karwowski proposed a radical way of preserving corpses: suspending them in glass cubes. Patented as a “Method of Preserving the Dead,” Karwowski provided diagrams and directions “whereby a corpse may be hermetically incased within a block of transparent glass” and thus “maintained for an indefinite period in a perfect and lifelike condition.” First the corpse would be drenched with “sodium silicate or water-glass,” and then, once dried, covered with “molten glass.” Karwowski’s patent is on view in Curious and Curiouser: Surprising Finds from the Rakow Library now at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York. In a blog post for Corning called “Glass and Death,” glass artist Caitlin Hyde writes: There are some interesting bits of logic to Karwowski’s plan. Water glass is use ... Read full article.